Off the Road (4 page)

The manager quickly
discerned that I was not a rock-climbing hound who’d come to learn the latest
advance in titanium carabiners. He knew what he saw: a gold-card-carrying desk
jockey with a head full of distant vistas. He signaled a scattered pack of
wilderness consultants, and they surrounded me.

When I was a teenager,
camping gear was sold at the Army-Navy store. The place was located uptown, in
a marginal neighborhood, and was operated by a chunky old man with thick
glasses and a consumptive cough who dreamed of one day opening a gun shop. I
still have in a closet at home an old green rucksack with
U.S. ARMY
stamped on it and long straps pinched with metal tips. I have my felt-covered
canteen with a chain to hold the cap, now missing. The mess kit is in a plastic
bag, blackened by its first and last use over a campfire. My bowie knife, in
its handsome tooled-leather sheath, is in a drawer. As a boy I used to carry it
on camp-outs, but it was soon retired since it was too big to use around a
campfire and too small for the woods. A bowie knife is best for wrestling
gators and killing nightstalkers, problems that never came up.

I briefly considered
gathering up my old goods and flying to Europe. If it was authenticity I
wanted, there was something exceedingly real, in my imagination, about this
equipment. But my wilderness consultants knew better. By the time I left the
store, I owned

■
Lycra bo
ots,
“not waterproofed because you want your feet to breathe and not sweat.”

■
two-ply hiking socks, with thin tubing up the ankle to create a “capillary
effect” for “chiropodic aspiration.”

■
a
backpack with an interior frame bent into a “parabolic twist”
to fit my spine.

■
a
sleeping bag that weighed about a pound.

■
a
tent, about two pounds, with magic poles connected by thin shock cords. Unfurl,
shake a little, and the tent practically snapped into position in one minute.
Neat.

■
a
poncho the size of a
fist
that nearly floated in air.

■
an
air mattress that self-inflated.

■
a
toilet bag, “a state-of-the-art advance over the old shaving kit,” that
unzipped and tumbled open to a three-tier set of tidy pouches and a dangling
mesh net pocket to keep a toothb
rush aerated.

■
a
Swiss Army knife, with a sharp saw that cut down trees (and it does).

I bought it all, of course,
and tossed in a green rubber snakebite kit and a tube of something called
Instant Fire.

Only one piece of the
traditional equipment called for special consideration. The shell was the sole
item of dress that served no utilitarian purpose.

The shell was purely
symbolic. According to one of the Finisterre legends, when James’s disciples
carried his sepulcher from the stone boat, they interrupted a pagan wedding.
The sight of them spooked the groom’s horse, which bolted into the sea where
both drowned. James’s first European miracle took place shortly thereafter when
the horse and groom—-both alive —rose majestically from the breaking waves,
trailing garlands of seaweed laced with dozens of scallop shells.

This association of the
shell with renewed life dates even farther back to John the Baptist, who used a
shell in his surfside christenings. Many baptismal fonts to this day take the
shape of the scallop shell. It was a symbol of rebirth, the very task of the
pilgrimage specifically and Christianity generally.

Other genealogies go back to
images of pagan fertility—a symbol not of rebirth but of birth itself. The
hinged scallop opens and reveals something new, a meaning connected to the
scallop’s physical similarity to a vagina. Botticelli’s
Birth of Menus
shows the goddess taking her first step onto the land from a giant Santiago shell.

Another Spanish
interpretation holds that the fingered scallop is the hand of Saint James,
outstretched in the open-palmed expression of comfort and encouragement. Hung
around the neck, the shell taps gently with each step at the pilgrim’s heart, a
soft metronomic patting from James’s hand that heartens the piigrim to keep on.

Here is a symbol that
transcends the road itself, with a meaning that has survived from primitive
man’s desire for fecundity through Christianity’s idea of rebirth to the
Hallmark Card sentimentality of a hand tapping the rhythm of the pilgrim’s
heart. I had to have one.

The problem is, for the
modern pilgrim, the shell no longer holds much significance. In Spanish and
French cuisine, there is an elegant appetizer called Vieiras de Santiago or
Coquille St. Jacques, literally “Saint James’s Shell.” The only other surviving
reference is a proofreading mark in French called a
coquille.
It is a
circle with a line through it like a veined scallop and—omen or no—signifies a
mistake.

Where was a modern pilgrim
to find a shell? The medieval pilgrim could borrow a shell from a neighbor or a
relative who had walked the road. Or a pilgrim might buy one from the local
clergy or, during the road’s peak, from itinerant shellmongers. This was one
problem I couldn’t solve in America. So I flew to Madrid, bought my train
ticket to the town nearest Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, and spent my few days in Spain’s capital reconnoitering for shells.

I’m not sure what was going
through my mind when I flew into Madrid. Did I think the Spaniards would have
shell shops? Or that humpbacked peddlers on the street would open their coats
and show off a selection of scallops, large and small?

Moreover, once I made the
commitment of actually flying to Spain, the embarrassment of calling myself a
pilgrim consumed me. An idea that had seemed so suggestive as I scanned the New
Jersey Palisades shriveled upon my arrival into something small, dark, and
stupid, and it sat in my gut like lead. When I landed at the Madrid International Airport, I began to ask myself once again: What in hell am I doing here? I
stood at the baggage conveyor, moronically hypnotized as the arriving luggage
piled up and spun round and round, hundreds of bags, skis, suitcases, and
trunks—each plastered with a yellow bumper sticker announcing Madrid’s airport
abbreviation in big black letters. Eventually my backpack belched from a hole
and rode around in a circle, mocking me in agreement with the other packages:
MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD.

I resolved to end my shell
crisis practically. I talked to people I knew in Spain. The only good advice
was to find a gourmet food store that might specialize in the finest cooking
accessories since Vieiras de Santiago were cooked in the shell. The department
store, Corte Inglés, usually carried them, but since they weren’t in season,
the clerk told me no one would have them. He was a nice man, a seafood
connoisseur. When I told him why I really wanted the shell, he plopped his
beefy arm on my shoulder, snorted witheringly, and pointed in the direction of
the store’s gag and novelty section.

I checked my train ticket to
France. No question about it, unrefundable.

The novelty shop did offer
the modern pilgrim a wide selection of shells. There was a monstrous scallop
practically the size of a head with hand-painted wooden figurines sloppily
glued inside to form a crèche. There was a glass lamp full of shells. Another
objet d’art was a shapeless glop of shell sculpture, either of the Dada school
or evidence that shells, mucilage, and LSD do not mix. It was selling for
twenty dollars. I opted for a handmade model of Columbus’s caravel, the
Santa Maria
—a hull of plastic with sawed-off pencils for masts and three scallop
shells serving as billowing sails. I spent my last afternoon in Madrid with a bottle of nailpolish remover carefully ungluing and unshellacking my little
ship, transforming a new souvenir into an old one.

In Montpellier, France, everyone knows the little town of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, but no one except an odd man with
a car for hire can remember the location of the old cloister. My driver is
friendly with the cheerful habit of answering every question,
“Oui.”
After a thirty-minute ride, he deposits me before a small stone edifice, all
that Robert Barnard has left to the locals of the once great monastery.

For a thirteenth-century
ruin, it is simple and well preserved. I step back among the olive trees to
take in the ancient yellow stone. The ground has linear features. I make
right-angled gestures with my hands and try to conjure where the cloister once
stood. I amble down to the building itself, walking around the corners,
trailing a finger along the forlorn, ancient stone until I come upon a small
dirty window set in a corrugated steel door. I wipe away some dust and peer in
to discover that I am contemplating the ineffability of a garage housing a
rusting Citroën.

My driver is slightly embarrassed
at my architectural prowess and, grinning maniacally and honking many a
“Oui”
through his nose, makes several other attempts to locate the scarred site of
the old cloister. At the center of Saint Guilhem-le-Désert, I set off on foot.
But I find that each local points me farther and farther out of town to another
set of scattered stones. Hell, I am pretty sure I did find it. I’m just not
certain which of the many piles of stones belonged to the old monastery.

It begins to rain. By the
time I return to the car, I am agitated for the less-than-noble reason that I
have spent $50 to get rained on in a quaint French village. In the meantime,
the driver has made some inquiries on my behalf among the locals at a bar. He
and his new acquaintances are waiting by the car, and he is enthusiastic to
make his report.

“Eh,
Americaine,
the
cloister you are looking for?”

“Yes.”

“It is in New York!”

I board the next train out
of town. I don’t exactly know why. I guess it’s cheating. But I am wasting
money, and I feel lacking in basic pilgrim skills. When it comes right down to
it—and major experts will back me up here—I don’t really know what I am doing.

I disembark in Orthez, France. It is only a few days’ walk from an important village, Saint-Jean Pied de
Port, where two of the French trails converge before threading into the
Pyrenees and then to Spain. When British pilgrims crossed the English Channel
by boat in the Middle Ages, they often drifted south to towns such as Orthez.
Then they would gather to cross the Pyrenees in huge groups for protection
against—as every history book says —blackguards and highwaymen. I figure this
is a more fitting place to
really
begin.

The way out of Orthez is a
narrow industrial highway and a favorite of amphetamine-powered, speeding
truckers. Ten minutes into my first (true) steps of walking as a pilgrim, it
begins to rain. I struggle into my lighter-than-air poncho. Each passing semi
cracks a whip of stinging droplets against my legs and face. Flow
serendipitous. Now I don’t need to flagellate myself.

Everything mocks me this
morning. All my doubts about this pilgrimage find expression in this valley.
The roar of each truck is a chorus of humiliating laughter. The billboards
continuously advertise a soft drink called “Pschitt.” The otherwise serene
French countryside is populated by stubby pine trees, each branch ending in a
tight fist of dark green needles from which shoots up, like a taunting obscene
gesture, a single finger of tender growth. The pathetic fallacy is getting on my
nerves.

The danger of the speeding
traffic reaches critical mass when one truck passes another beside me. Suddenly
a truck rattling at eighty miles per hour is kissing my elbow. The air foil at
that speed slugs me with the force of a body blow, pitching me into a drainage
ditch. I brush myself off. My shoulder is sore. The rain quickens its pace to a
full gallop.

As I enter the village of Saliers de Bearn, I consult my map carefully. The next two days are nothing but
trucking highways, danger, Pschitt ads, and certain death. But after Saint-Jean
Pied de Port, the road is less traveled, more pilgrimesque. A short note on my
pilgrim’s map mentions that in Saint-Jean there lives an old woman named Madame
Debril who has been greeting pilgrims for decades. Here is authenticity. The
tradition of the humble volunteer who lives on the road to help pilgrims has a
long historical pedigree. In the account of his 1726 pilgrimage, a French
pilgrim named Guillaume Manier wrote admiringly of one Mme. Belcourt of Bayonne
who lived “in the first house on the right, which has a sign of Santiago
applied above her door. There all pilgrims coming and going rest. This woman is
known on the four continents of the world for that.” Madame Debril and
Saint-Jean sounded like a proper beginning for a modern pilgrimage.

I sit on a public bench,
consider the prospect of two days on a truckers’ highway, and remind myself of
the rich tradition of human frailty associated with the road.

I think about Benedict and
his monasteries, and about Saint James, and about the very origin of the road
itself. The first “proof” the early promoters of the road cited of Saint
James’s presence in Spain came from the writings of a man named St. Beatus. He
lived fifty years before the discovery of the tomb, and he had heavily
publicized Saint James’s association with Spain (the “most worthy and holy
apostle, radiant, gold-glittering leader of Spain”). Beatus used a simple list
of the apostles and the places where they had proselytized as an original
source of James’s visit to Spain. This list had been copied by an anonymous
scribe who mistakenly wrote that James’s territory was “Hispaniam,” or Spain, rather than “Hierosolyman,” or Jerusalem. So the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela—which
has been credited with forging Spain into a nation, defeating the Moors,
sending Arab learning into central Europe, bringing light to the Dark Ages,
sparking the Renaissance, fashioning the first international laws, and
conjuring the idea of a unified Europe— owes its origin to a typo.